One of the most telling moments of this 40th anniversary revisit to The Who’s best-known album Quadrophenia came in one of the least likely locations, amidst the video montage which accompanied martial instrumental “The Rock” on the three circular screens hanging behind the band.

A reel of political snippets
flashed by - Vietnam, Reagan, Princess Diana, Thatcher, Blair, 9/11, Baghdad
falling and Occupy Wall Street – and it felt as though this was part of an
attempt to recast The Who as an immortal soundtrack to the times, whatever
times those are.

In the event it was
impossible to evade a certain sense of nostalgia for youths lost while the
album was played in order by singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend and
their eight-piece band (including Townshend’s brother Simon), although much of
this was built in to the show. The group’s departed members made unlikely guest
appearances through the medium of archive footage, first John Entwistle playing
a bass riff on the ever-dynamic “5:15”, then drummer Keith Moon vocally
‘duetting’ with Daltrey on “Bell Boy”. Townshend would also offer up a later
dedication to the departed Scots novelist Iain Banks before “Behind Blue Eyes”,
earning a heartily respectful cheer.

It’s to The Who’s credit
that much of the songs they have written – especially those on Quadrophenia
itself, a piece which literally and metaphorical leads a young man to the very
precipice of adulthood – work both as flashback and an urgent commemoration of
the moment. Perhaps not the proggy “The Rock” itself, but certainly the fevered
demand for identity that is “The Real Me”, the exceptional “Drowned”, which saw
Townshend escalate hostilities to an angry roar with the line “bring on that
storm / bring on that fuckin' hurricane” as Daltrey wailed on his harmonica and
a Union Jack sank beneath the waves on the screen behind, and a hypnotic “Love
Reign O’er Me”.

It was a show which could
have buckled under both the limitations of age and the commercial nature of its
staging. Daltrey, shirt half unbuttoned and doused in sweat, seemed finally
almost wilted by the heat, while Townshend found himself in the odd position of
thanking their musical director for impressive arrangements with which he had
nothing to do. Yet instead the magic happened, and something about the timeless
crux of rebellion and uncertainty in these songs – "Pinball Wizard", "Baba O’Riley"
and "Won’t Get Fooled Again" finding their way into a mountainously epic encore –
translated into something truly special.